Sunday, November 30, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

Study finds old women who attend church services twice a week smoke less than those who do not.


And the headlines read: BEING RELIGIOUS REDUCES YOUR CHANCES OF DYING BY 20 PER CENT

Here I thought 100% of people died. Apparently not, as 20% of Christians are actually immortals. How strange? Looking at better reports for the study we find a pretty critical point.


The apparent benefits of deriving substantial strength and comfort from religion disappeared when the researchers also controlled for smoking and alcohol consumption.


Realsie journalists are all blighted by this kind of poppycock.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

85% Man!

Some clever place has a gender analyzer to find the gender of a specific blogger using Artificial Intelligence. Lets see.

We think http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/ is written by a man (85%).

I am a man. I possess at least one penis. I have a Y chromosome given to me by my father.

The analyzer finds my blog to be less man-ish than skepchick.

We think http://skepchick.org/blog/ is written by a man (89%). There's the one male writer (Sam Ogden) just testosterones the hell out of that place.

Artificial Intelligence == Fail.

UPDATE: This post failed to move the percent.

Boobs, breasts, knockers, video games, kill, kill, murder, shoot, stab, snips, snails, puppy dog tails, pwn, noob, crush!

UPDATE2: Previous update reduced my manliness by 1%

UPDATE3: I just rechecked for kicks... I'm a woman now. Shhhh... don't tell my penis.
We think http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman (69%).

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Faith and Uncertainty

Faith is necessarily inconsistent. In fact, Godel proved that any system which could be used to determine the truth of any marginally complex statement must itself be inconsistent or incomplete. If it could prove itself true then it must necessarily be contradictory, able to prove any statement, and thus be completely worthless for establishing the truth of any claim. Since you can have faith that your faith is justified, one must properly understand that faith proves nothing. In fact, it is necessarily powerless to establish the truth of any proposition.

I know it seems a bit like hitting a flea with a bulldozer to show faith is pointless by way of Godel, but it's still a fun point to make.

Digital Cuttlefish: I am Darwin.

http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-am-charles-darwin.html

There's something too awesome about his poetry at times, this is an exemplar of that point.

I am Charles Darwin—what I mean is, I am Man
I’m a billion trillion accidents instead of One Big Plan
Just a step or two from chimpanzee or from orangutan
Maybe more than distant cousins, but you recognize the clan

Friday, November 21, 2008

What the end of the world would look like...



Except after getting brighter there... it would get even more bright and more bright before a lot of bad things happened.

September 20th, Police Dash Cam of Meteor.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Rapture and You.

According to the general theories put forth by your average Adventists (believers in the second advent, return of Jesus, rapture) Jesus will appear over Jerusalem and shall stay fixed in the sky. As the world turns he will take his faithful up in what is to be called the rapture. This is typically because the general picture given of the rapture suggests a flat earth where Jesus just floats in the sky and everybody gets sucked up towards him. Given a spherical planet this doesn't work so well.

Now, as an evil vile atheist, I will not be taken. However, you are like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future and not very good at thinking 4th dimensionally. We live in the information age. Jerusalem is GMT +2 whereas I live in a GMT -8 time zone and thus have a 10 hour difference. So given that I probably am not going to be cut off from the biggest news story in human history for 10 hours it seems likely that I will hear about this astoundingly precise prediction made by religious idiots hours prior to Jesus floating over my location. I will have a number of hours to convert to what would, at that time, be a nearly undeniable statement of fact.

So don't worry about my soul Christians, I'll be sure to convert when there's ample evidence and regardless that I think you're utterly idiotic beliefs are absolutely false. I'll be sure to convert with a few hours to spare making you look utterly stupid for wasting your entire life when I'd only have wasted a couple hours of my time.

Banking.

Giving money you didn't have to people who couldn't pay you back was a bad idea. Who knew!?!

Monday, November 17, 2008

I hate when cars stop for me.

When I'm walking and the road is wide open and they have more than enough time to drive passed. I often purposefully stop so that they can go by without even chancing it and increase the chance that they just drive right on by. But, no! They stop and wait for me to walk in front of their car. It would be absolutely no inconvenience for either side if they had just drove by in the first place. Nobody would have needed to slow down or change anything and we wouldn't have any collisions.

People go out of their way, even if I go out of my way to make doubly sure that they don't, to make sure they have the most opportune chance to murder me. Maybe I don't want to walk in front of two tons of metal ready and able to crush my flesh and bones at the press of a pedal. Maybe you shouldn't go out of your way just to make sure that I do.

"Oh, a person is going to cross the street about five seconds after I'm long gone. I simply MUST stop and force them to acknowledge my ability to crush them with my massive automobile or they don't get to go anywhere!"


Wee bit ditzy and crazy, but it really annoys the crap out of me sometimes.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Stop dissing the unexamined life...

It comes in HighDef with 7.1 Surround Sound... that's gotta impress even the most fuddy of the duddies around.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Large Protests Against Prop 8

I hope they travel back in time because otherwise they are pointless and an example of why prop 8 passed.

Honestly, giant No protests on the news nightly for the last couple weeks before the election would have had considerable sway back when sway was possible.

The No camp was all reaction. Yes sent a bunch of cards around saying Barack Obama doesn't support gay marriage and only then did the No people point out that Barack Obama supports voting no. For a proposition that had 70%+ African American support they should have taken the president elects support to the bank early and often.

I'm glad that people are passionate, they should have done this before.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

At Least There's Still No God.

Politics should probably be ignored about now. I'll hope for the best for Al Franken recount and maybe perk my head up for the Martin/Chambliss runoff, and pay some attention to the Merkley count which predictions suggest he's going to win outright as the count more Dem counties and some lesser places calling it for him. And hope for that guy "A SERIES OF TUBES" is running against.

But honestly, I'm pretty well done with following the races. I really should be. Letting my mood rise and fall with the polls is probably not recommendable. And this blog seems a little makeshift with the politics and quirkiness and atheism all gobbly-gooked. I suppose it's written mostly for myself but it seems a bit odd to have "God's Not" not clearly defined. That or perhaps it is. I'm quite happy Obama won just like the 63 million (more than any other presidential race ever) who voted for him and the many more million who are also happy about it.

As for those people who insist that this is the time we really need to hound him to get our agendas fulfilled... eh. If both houses and the presidency can't manage to push a viable agenda to help people then they don't deserve any more help.

There's still hope for a 60 seat majority in the Senate... a very lowly and silly hope. I think I'll crawl back under a rock somewhere and stop paying attention to things. I hope Palin runs and wins the nomination on 2012. That'll make reelecting Obama an easy task. I'm fine with that. And hope I don't fall for paying attention to the 2010 midterms.

There's still no God. At least there's some debate on that issue by people too silly to realize they are talking to themselves.

Enjoy.

Farm animals > Gays

Prop 8
Yes
5,344,012
52%
No
4,854,132
48%

With 99% of the vote in. Prop 2 which says farm animals need to be treated with a bit more care passed with flying colors. So farm animals get more rights and gays get less.

Okay back to only caring about myself. It'll be a few months or perhaps years before this crap is finally overturned. I'm pretty sure it'll need to be decided at the 9th circuit level in order to strike down the constitutional amendment. Even if your case is a solid winner it takes a while to get up to that level.

California Gives Obama The Win... then goes gay bashing.

Damn it. I know it's not counted yet and still in processing but it looks like 8 is going to pass.

Yes

4,488,600
52%

No

4,173,033
48%

With 82% in.

Fricking California.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election '08 Results

Go Vote.

Vote.
Today.
If you haven't already.

* Yes, I'm very American-centric with this demand.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Watching Expelled: Underwhelmed beyond expectations. Part 2.

43 minutes in. This douche is in a chair.

Berlin wall of non-academic freedom. Good Comrade. Scientists are bullies. Pull back the clothe, it's like the wizard of oz.

They can't say it's complicated? I've read enough biology papers and reviewed enough to see they say that a lot. The nitty-gritty is a pain in the ass and more complex than you previously thought at pretty much every turn. If not for evolution we'd be completely swamped.

Liberal Christians hate fundamentalists and so they side with the atheists. Those evil colluders!

Evolution says there's no God.

Dawkins turned toward atheism by evolution. Overly frank. He constantly comes off really well.

We don't get even level debate. Those bastards think that ID isn't worthy to be considered on the same level. -- DUH!

Some ID supporting journalist wrote some favorable ID stories and ended up getting laughed at. -- How oppressive!

In Poland the courts don't need to decide. Court cases don't decide anything! Poland doesn't have crappy creationists wanting to teach religion in public schools or the first amendment which says that they can't. Did that polish guy support ID? Seriously? I don't know.

It must be very important! It must be something more sinister!

They move to attack religion in order to stamp out ID! Awe, it's that dumbass who tries to ride Dawkin's coattails. He's totally douche and lame. Another clip of douchey guy in chair.

Why is this clipping out Murrow and making it seem like he supported ID or something? That seems pretty stupid.

Early scientists were believers! Science is biased towards atheism.

But were their other consequences? ...

You're here today and you're gone tomorrow! -- Okay duh.

Guy deconverted by understanding evolution. That's pretty reasonable. No free will? No meaning? That's a bit cold but eh.

I'm going to shoot myself in the head. I don't feel bad about it. That's absolutely seems reasonable.

More deconversion with evolution. Evolution and atheism do have strong correlations.

PZ called it fairy tales! ZOUNDS!

Dawkins says goblins.

Attenborough says it's stupid.

Maher says regulate religion if you're regulating dangerous things

PZ says it's like knitting. Fun, gathering, no importance, and we should let it die a slow death. -- Clearly he wants to eradicate it by force.

HITLER!

Here's somewhere where the Germans killed some handicapped people.

Breeding programs are a human invention which long predate Darwinian evolution. It isn't that they are taken from evolution but rather Darwin's great insight was to see that the same factors which allowed for the breeding of livestock would equally apply to the breeding of animals themselves via slower natural means and that a Malthusian argument could be made for all organisms and, as such, this would cause a gradual improvement in complexity and explain many vast arrays of lingering questions in biology. -- So yeah, pretty much all of it is pretty much nonsense.

Ben Stein keeps asking the tour guide some retarded questions.

Eugenics!

This is why medicine is largely not very sciency.

Planned Parenthood!

Stein is overacting, and doing a crappy job at it. Hitler was very logical. Clearly. Evil but logical. Science is evil! Muahahahahaha! -- This is epic fail.

I know Darwinism isn't responsible for Nazism but Darwinism is responsible for Nazism and it will happen again!!!!

Journalist women is talking about abortion and euthenasia like it's a holocaust. I get the distinct impression that all of these people are very right-wing... why is that?

The Elites control all the research money. No religion!

Ew. You sick bastard. Ben Stein is now in Down House. Isn't there some rule?

Some more sinister walking around.

Hey, there's a statue of Darwin somewhere? That looked pretty cool. I want one.

Jefferson wrote "creator" so values come from God. Scientists aren't alone. Darwinians hate America! It's a massive conspiracy.

Baylor refused to say their issues had to do with ID. Even though it was tainting their good name.

We didn't want ID tainting our names. Avalos is great.

It's just like the Berlin wall!

Dawkins is donning his armor for the coming battle. Armor being make-up and battle being sucked into a fairly nonsensically cut up interview.

Why do you use the word who? -- Dawkins wins. Panspermia is possible, but certainly didn't happen. He supports ID! What? You're a dumbass Mr. Stein.

Stein is obsessed with some gods.

What would you do if you ran into God? "Sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself." My favorite reply to that kind of question is, "what I would say would depend on how good his apology was."

Back to the lecture.

YOU MAY HAVE YOUR SCIENCE BUT YOU CAN NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM*!!!!

* freedom to take your science out of context and push religion.


I knew I would. I want my hour and a half back!

Watching Expelled, prepairing for underwhelmity.

Expelled Exposed.

Intro with spiced up prison camps.

Freedom is great, freedom makes us great, but what if we didn't have freedom?

We are losing our freedoms in science!

Creationists does something stupid, gets canned. (I expect this shall be a theme)

Shermer things "something else going on". -- Yup. Apparently he published the paper faking the peer review himself and was lambasted for not going through proper channels and for completely abusing his authority.

Another creationist starts teaching creationism and is not invited back to work more for the university. -- Zounds.

Doctor says evolution is false. -- Internet is mean to him.

Mark sets ups a fake lab at Baylor and it gets shut down. Baylor, though a Baptist university, is actually pretty good. Although, they recently fired the president and decided to go way more stupid. So any diplomas pre-2008 are probably legit.

Astronomer doesn't get tenure. Um. Nobody guarantees you tenure and I think ID would be a pretty good reason to deny you. Look how screwed over Behe tenure at Lehigh worked out. He doesn't publish papers anymore and he's a complete embarrassment. Lehigh is a good school but in my mind I associate it with stupidity.

"We don't want people to be taught that the earth is flat or that the holocaust never happened." -- Um, irony of irony, this movie got condemned by the Anti-Defamation league for holocaust denial. I haven't yet been confronted with this part of the film, so I suspect it is going to get much worse.

Ben Stein is lost... still lost.
He found it.

He talks with the Discovery Institute then a Bible college and then a bunch of religious points. They are suppose to keep up this front.

Evolution:Intelligent Design::Newtonian Physics:Einsteinian Physics... ? Really? Somebody needs to read Isaac Asimov's Relativity of Wrong to get the basic idea of how science works. Sure you can evolve but how does evolution do design? Wow that's pretty dumb.

It isn't going to be settled by the numbers but by the evidence and the arguments. If ID had any of those, they'd be set!

Now Ben's in France. Nothing's clear, you don't have very much math. We don't have a good idea of what a species is! -- That's true but has no bearing on evolution. I'm considerably underwhelmed here.

Dawkins is back. These clips are the only oasis in the whole thing. Though Dawkins atheism is fairly different than his evolution belief. There's certainly a relationship there, but it's pretty unrelated.

First cell? -- What long before that it works fine even in the RNA world.

No explanation for abiogenesis. Claims Miller's experiments were wrong. Popular theory is crystals! He's not joking because that's actually a really good theory. What the hell?

Ben Stein's Money joke...

250 proteins so it's math wise inconceivable. That's not possible! The problem with every last thing that says anything remotely close to this is that we don't actually know what the very minimal would be and we get evolution kicking in pretty early making all the future odds non-existent (once evolution kicks in the odds are ~1 that you get something, moreso considering it already happened).

Directed panspermia? That's mostly in jest and simply outsources the problem. Though if 4 billion years isn't enough we can use most of the 13.7 billion years to do whatever we need. Though, 2 billion seems more than enough.

A gigabyte. Zounds. I could put my genetic code on my thumbdrive. Oh the humanity!

I'm lost. I'm not even sure what I'm suppose to be impressed with.

Hey, it's that stolen Harvard animation that ERV talked so much about. Making for one of the few good bits in this entire production. Ouch, they changed it a lot. This is actually way worse in places. The Harvard animation was better.

Where do you get information from? Isn't that a question for computer scientists. Hey, I'm one of those and have an okay understanding of information theory. Let me explain. SDFKDSfioasdfoijsdfjasd2-289023d8923di2klj2kl;3dmkmndalksdfds -- That's more information than pretty much anything else I've typed here. Any mutation would produce information just as there is more information in the TV static than their is in the TV show. Evolution largely works to parse this information and isolate via natural selection any little bit that lucks into creating an organism marginally better than it's cousins. What? They are still harping on this crap?

OH SWEET SPAGHETTI MONSTER! I'm ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH!!! ARG!!! -- I'm burnt out about now. I'll try some more a bit later.